Ruminations on the not-so-culinary aspects of eating
a diet free of meats.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

logic

The following is an excerpt from a short-story written in 1964 by John Updike calledThe Christian Roommates:

In these months there was often a debate about the subject posed under their eyes:Hub's vegetarianism. There he would sit, hus tray heaped high with a steaming doublehelping of squash and lima beans, while Fitch would try to locate the exact point atwhich vegetarianism became inconsistent. "You eat eggs," he said. "Yes," Hub said. "You realize that every egg, from the chicken's point of reference, is a newborn baby?" "But in fact it is not unless it has been fertilized by a rooster." "But suppose," Fitch pursued, "as sometimes happens--which I happen to know, fromworking in my uncle's henhouse in Maine--an egg that should be sterile has in fact beenfertilized and contains an embryo?" "If I see it, I naturally don't eat that particular egg." Hub said, his lips making thatsatisfied concluding snap. Fitch pounced triumphantly, spilling a fork to the floor with a lurch of his hand."But why?" The hen feels the same pain on being parted from an egg whether sterileor fertile. The embryo is unconscious--a vegetable. As a vegetarian, you should eat itwith special relish." He tipped back in his chair so hard he had to grab the table edgeto keep from toppling over. "It seems to me," Dawson said, frowning darkly--these discussions, clogging sometwist of his ego, often spilled him into a vile temper--"that psychoanalysis of hens ishardly relevant." "On the contrary," Kern said lightly, clearing his throat and narrowing his pink,infected eyes, "it seems to me that there, in the tiny, dim mind of the hen--theminimal mind, as it were--is where the tragedy of the universe achieves a pinpointfocus. Picture the emotional life of a hen. What does she know of companionship? Aflock of pecking, harsh-voiced gossips. Of shelter? A few dung-bespattered slats.Of food? Some flecks of mash and grit insolently tossed on the ground. Of love?The casual assault of a polygamous cock--cock in the biblical sense. Then, into thisheartless world, there suddenly arrives, as if by magic, an egg. An egg of her own.An egg, it must seem to her, that she and Gog have made. How she must cherish it,its beautiful baldness, its gentle luster, its firm yet somehow fragile, softly swayingweight." Carter had broken up. He bent above his tray, his eyes tight shut, his dark facecontorted joyfully. "Puhleese," he gasped at last. "You're making my stomachhurt." "Ah, Carter," Kern said softly, "if that were only the worst of it. For then, one day,while the innocent hen sits cradling this strange, faceless, oval child, its little weightswaying softly in her wings"--he glanced hopefully at Carter, but the colored boybit his lower lip and withstood the jab--"an enormous man, smelling of beer andmanure, comes and tears the egg from her grasp. And why? Because he"--Kernpointed, arm fully extended, across the table, so that his index finger, orange withnicotine, almost touched Hub's nose--"he, Saint Henry Palamountain, wants moreeggs to eat. 'More eggs!' he cries voraciously, so that the brutal steers and faithlesspigs can continue to menace the children of American mothers!" Dawson slammed his silver down, got up from the table, and slouched out of thedining room. Kern blushed. In the silence, Peterson put a folded slice of roast beefin his mouth and said, chewing, "Jesus, Hub, if somebody else kills the animals youmight as well eat 'em. They don't give a damn anymore." "You understand nothing," Hub said simply.